CHAPTER 4
Reginald didn’t bug Maurice about setting a time to hang out. He felt odd having proposed a bro date in the first place, and he wasn’t used to not being laughed at. He figured he’d let the idea simmer. Either Maurice was genuinely interested in hanging out or he was just being polite. If the latter was true, Maurice would never propose a time and Reginald would give himself the dignity of never raising the issue. But as it was, Maurice turned out to be genuinely interested, and surprised him the next Monday by suggesting they go bowling.
They settled on meeting at the lanes at 9pm — a full two-meal cycle after work for Reginald and two hours before work for Maurice. Reginald was surprised that Maurice had suggested bowling. He half figured they’d end up using a Ouija board or attending a black opera. Something as normal as bowling coming from the sword-wielding goth kid was a welcome surprise.
Reginald hadn’t bowled in years, but he’d been good back in high school despite already being over two hundred and fifty pounds. Now, a hundred pounds heavier and with foot trouble, back trouble, high cholesterol, and (he was pretty sure) pre-diabetes, bowling was still within his physical capabilities. It was physical but not taxing, and the lane balls came in a wide range of weights and finger-hole sizes. As a plus, a bro date involving bowling wasn’t awkwardly intimate like dinner or loud like going to a bar — which for Reginald would also be totally uninteresting because he was a teetotaler.
Yes, bowling would do just fine.
They were three frames into the first game when Maurice seemed to hear something, looked toward the entrance, and groaned.
Reginald raised his head and followed Maurice’s gaze. At first, he thought that Walker and his clones had gotten into character and followed them to the bowling alley, but then he realized it was an entirely different group of perfect people.
It was Maurice’s own collection of Todd Walker clones.
The group was comprised of two couples that appeared to be in their early twenties. All four were supernaturally beautiful. The women’s hair (identical in style, though one was blonde and one was a deep chestnut) was perfectly groomed and styled, shiny and bouncy, seeming to move in a breeze that didn’t exist. The cheekbones on all four were high and perfectly set. The men had a sixteenth inch of stubble that didn’t look shaggy, but instead looked stylish and handsome. They were somehow both rugged and feminine, like they could chop some serious wood, but could do so without ruining their nails or knocking a hair out of their perfect cover-model hairdos.
All four were dressed like Maurice — full black coats with black clothes underneath. They even wore black nail polish, and the women wore black lipstick. The only difference between their black clothes and Maurice’s black clothes was the cut. What the four beautiful people were wearing was chic and at the height of couture. What Maurice wore looked practical. Where Maurice looked morose, the four newcomers looked like European runway models.
“Friends of yours?” said Reginald.
“Hardly,” said Maurice. He made eye contact with one of the men, who’d spotted him and was leading the group over.
Maurice stood and met them halfway between the lanes and the door. All five of them stood in a scrum, twenty feet from Reginald. Maurice looked small and shabby next to the others. It was as if they were all siblings in a high-class litter of dogs, and Maurice was the runt. Reginald tried not to watch them out of courtesy, but he couldn’t help staring at the women. They were astonishingly beautiful. Like dark angels, they were.
After a few minutes of what looked like argumentative discussion, Maurice walked over to Reginald and said, “Sorry about this. I need to handle something. It shouldn’t take long.”
The blonde woman was looking at Reginald. She was licking her lips. His first thought was that she was mocking him — someone as attractive as she was couldn’t possibly be attracted to someone like him — but then he noticed that the other woman was doing the same. Then, putting a new point on the whole experience, he noticed that the men were doing it, too.
The blonde woman raised her hand and made a slow beckoning gesture with one delicate finger. Reginald didn’t consider refusing. His legs propped him up as if of their own will and he found himself standing beside her before he knew what had happened.
The woman looked at Maurice. “I want him to come with us,” she said. Then, to Reginald: “What’s your name, big boy?”
“Reginald.”
“Nice to meet you, Reginald,” she purred. “I’m Moira.” She extended a hand. The gesture was feline. It almost felt as if she expected him to kiss it and he actually felt himself bending at the waist to obey, but then he caught Maurice’s eye and simply shook the beautiful hand. She lowered it slowly, her eyes never leaving his.
He was beginning to feel lightheaded, as if he were intoxicated.
“Moira,” said Maurice. “Knock it off.”
The woman looked away, at Maurice. Reginald felt his environment return like a splash of cold water. It was as if a spell had been broken.
“Is he yours?” she asked Maurice.
The question seemed to embarrass Maurice. “We’re just hanging out,” he said.
“Then maybe he’d like to be mine,” said the woman with the chestnut hair, running a finger along his shoulder.
Reginald felt his chest rise.
“Or mine,” said one of the men.
Reginald felt his chest fall.
There was a moment of silence, and then Maurice stepped between the group and Reginald. He did it with the air of an older brother breaking up some kind of idiocy being perpetrated by siblings, but it was strange because the others were all at least four or five years older than he was.
“Reginald, this is Moira, Penelope, Charles, and Isaac. We have a… a kind of working arrangement. They need a few minutes of my time.”
“He’s been naughty,” said the one Maurice had called Penelope, running a finger down Reginald’s neck.
Moira whispered in his ear. “He’s been baaaaad…”
Maurice shook his head, exasperated.
“Charles and Isaac need to spend a few minutes with me out back, trying to intimidate me and pretending they can tell me what to do,” said Maurice, his eyes on Charles. “But then they’ll run on home like good little errand boys and we can finish our game. Isn’t that right, kids?”
It was odd to hear so young of a man call the others “kids” and speak to them so disrespectfully. There was some odd subtext beneath what Maurice and the others were saying that Reginald didn’t understand. Maurice seemed to be speaking with a double-meaning on purpose, knowing that it would mean nothing to Reginald but unable to stop himself from doing it anyway. Reginald was reminded of himself asking God, out loud, for his money back when Walker had put the Whoopee Cushion on his seat.
But what was most interesting to Reginald was that Maurice, who was smaller and younger than the others, was clearly in charge of whatever was happening. Isaac and Charles thought that they were in charge, but they were wrong.
“Okay,” said Reginald. “Do what you need to do. I’ll stay here.”
“The women are staying here,” said Maurice.
“Okay,” said Reginald with enthusiasm.
“So you’d better come with us,” said Maurice.
“Oh. Okay.”
The men turned and Reginald started to follow them, but then Penelope put a hand on his shoulder and turned him around. He looked into her eyes and found himself becoming lightheaded. She smiled and stroked his cheek. Reginald found himself repeating a foreign thought that seemed to have been borrowed from the lips of Todd Walker: I could nail her.
“Come on,” said Maurice, grabbing Reginald’s other shoulder. And so Reginald did, but before his eyes left Penelope, she mouthed the words, We’ll miss you.
They walked through the lobby of the bowling alley and down the back hallway, went through a door, and emerged into a rear parking lot. The main entrance was at the front, and most of the cars were parked there. There were only four cars and two dumpsters behind the building. The lot felt cavernous and quiet.
Maurice put a hand on Reginald’s chest and looked in his eyes. Then, very authoritatively, very unlike the shy and quiet IT professional Reginald knew from the office, he said, “Stay here. You won’t be interested in our discussion.”
Reginald decided to stay where he was. He leaned sideways against a dumpster, his elbow on the lid. He discovered that he wasn’t remotely interested in what the three men were going to talk about. He was mostly interested in staying where he was. In fact, he couldn’t conceive of not staying right where he was. Once Maurice said it, it seemed so obvious.
Despite his intense interest in staying by the dumpster and his relative lack of interest in what Maurice, Charles, and Isaac were doing, Reginald caught the gist of their conversation. Charles and Isaac had apparently been sent to reprimand Maurice about something that was, naturally, far less interesting than standing by a dumpster. Charles even pulled a sheaf of official-looking papers from an inside pocket of his coat and tried to give them to Maurice in the way a server would hand over a summons, but Maurice slapped them away and laughed. There was some shouting. Reginald heard a few uninteresting phrases and snippets tossed around. Among them were Charles saying, “Your age doesn’t give you any authority” and “Relic of a obsolete era” (despite being uninteresting, that caught Reginald’s attention because it was such a strange thing to say) and Maurice saying something about “bigotry” and “short-term thinking” and about his “not recognizing authority” of some kind. It was all very uninteresting.
Suddenly there was a sensation on his ear that cut through his lack of interest like a knife. There was a puff of cold breath on his neck. A soft, sexy voice at his right shoulder purred, “We couldn’t stand to be away from you.”
Over the other shoulder, on the dumpster side, another voice and another cold breath: “You’re… intoxicating.”
Right: “We were supposed to stay inside, but…” And a giggle.
Left: “It’s fun to be naughty.”
He turned and found himself face-to-face with Moira. Her face was two inches from his. She smelled amazing. She was unbelievably pale. He found himself falling into her green eyes, which had a silver tinge, as he’d fallen into Penelope’s earlier. They were the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.
“Do you want to be ours?” she said.
“Ours,” purred Penelope’s voice somewhere to his side.
“You don’t have to choose between us,” said Moira.
“We can share,” said Penelope.
“Yours,” said Reginald.
He fell and fell and fell into her eyes, and then there was a distant pain and then nothing at all except pleasure, and everything he’d ever, ever wanted.